In most manufacturing and packaging facilities, multiples of finished products are often packed into a cardboard case. The case is permanently marked with pre-printed artwork, labels, inkjet printers, or lasers to identify the contents of the case. Often, variable data is also applied to the case that indicates other important information such as batch number, lot codes, date codes, time codes, case contents, barcodes, and facility information. This information can be collected at various locations throughout the manufacturing process by means of Automatic Identification and Data Capture systems. The captured data can be used in Operations Execution Systems such as manufacturing execution, warehouse management, and supply chain management to name but a few. Not only is this marked data helpful to the manufacturer and customer, but is sometimes required for public health and safety.
Once the case of product is consumed by the customer, the cardboard exterior is often discarded along with all of the markings. The function of the case and its markings has served its purpose therefore disposal is an acceptable outcome at this point in the lifecycle of the packaging. Direct reuse of the cardboard case is not feasible as it was permanently marked with data that would be no longer valid for other contents of product. This type of case is referred to as a one-time-use case.
In some industries, an effort is made to reduce packaging costs by using reusable packing cases or crates that can be made of various materials including, but not limited to, plastic. One such industry is the milk products industry although it is obvious to those skilled in the art that such packing crates can be used in other industries for the storage, cartage and distribution of other products. Typically, a packing crate can be reused hundreds of times before reaching the end of its lifecycle thus is referred to as a multi-use or reusable case. An industry standard crate design can be used to hold various types of products. It is difficult to mark the packing crate in the same way cardboard cases are marked due to the design and material of the crate as well as its reusability.
There are three obstacles to marking a packing crate: physical restrictions of existing marking technologies, cost, and variability of data to mark. This inability to mark the packing crate with relevant information about the current contents leaves product manufacturers at a strategic disadvantage over the one-time-use cardboard case systems employed in other industries.
If one were to permanently mark the contents of the crate on the exterior sides of the crate, then the crate could not be used for all products and variable data marking would not be available. If one were to temporarily mark the contents of the crate on the exterior sides of the crate, then the crate could not be reused as current techniques for removable markings are not consistent and feasible. Removable markings would be labels and ink based solutions. Because of these limitations the only feasible approach to marking a crate is to permanently mark a unique identifier, and then associate the contents and variable data to the unique identifier in a database.
There are two well known techniques to permanently mark packing crates. A crate can be mechanically tagged with a Radio Frequency Identification, called RFID, chip or with using an industrial laser marking device. The RFID chip is expensive and is met with strong resistance from some manufacturers based on cost considerations. RFID technology also has limitations with respect to effective reading when placed around liquids. As most of the crate contents in the milk industry, as an example, are liquid products, the effectiveness of RFID as an identification technology can be diminished. In some cases, a RFID tag can become dislodged from the crate due to the harsh handling of the packing crate during normal wear and tear.
The alternative method is with laser marking of the plastic. Unfortunately laser marking of plastics is not a consistent method. The formulation and color of the plastic changes the effectiveness of the laser marking process. Millions of existing crates are in active circulation and effectiveness of laser marking on these crates would be a large uncertainty for a manufacturer.
Laser marking marks the surface of plastic with minimal penetration into the body of the material. This means that the entire mark exists only on the outer surface of the crate. Packing crates often experience harsh handling and scratching of the surface. A laser mark can be easily damaged by such a scratch thus rendering the accuracy of the laser mark unacceptable. Therefore both laser marking and RFID methods are either too costly or too ineffective at producing robust and easily readable identifications.
Milk product manufacturers, as an example, have not adopted any of the prior art identification methods, therefore plastic packing crates are not uniquely identifiable. This also implies that the milk product manufacturer is unable to track crated product through its manufacturing process. In addition, the manufacturer cannot determine the contents of a packing crate once it is packed without an employee looking inside the crate and manually recording it. Without the ability to identify the contents of the crate from the outside of a crate, in a machine readable format, then limited mechanical automation can be implemented to handle logistics of the reusable plastic packing crates within the manufacturing process.
Another inability of product manufacturers is the accurate recording of final destination for specific product outside their organization, also referred to as “track and trace”. Without the ability to uniquely identify a crate of product, the manufacturer cannot correlate shipping data to specific product. This would be helpful for product manufacturers to recall product from specific end users without having to do a recall from all customers.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a method and system for identifying and tracking reusable packing crates that overcomes the shortcoming of known prior art solutions for identifying and tracking such packing crates.